Killers of Men by Tony Monchinski

Author:Tony Monchinski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tony Monchinski
Published: 2020-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Put that boy out of his misery.” Madam Mattie, standing on her porch in her hoop skirts with her parasol, seconded Preacher Man.

“He might grow up, come lookin’ for you,” Preacher Man explained. “You didn’t finish McComb, he came lookin’ for ya.”

I stepped around the side of the building and walked out into the middle of the street to get a better look at the bodies crumpled over on one another. It was a sight.

“I can see clear in his face, Sturm. I’m tellin’ you. This one here, he gonna grow up and come lookin’ for ya. I know that look. Ain’t cha, boy?”

The kid was either in too much pain or too smart to answer.

Cordwainer Sturm stuck his revolver back in the sash, took the arm Madam Mattie offered him, and went back inside.

I looked down on the dead. One man’s arm jutted up to the sky, bent at the elbow, his revolver dangling by its trigger guard from a finger. I smelt shit then, bodies having evacuated themselves.

“Boy, listen here now.” Preacher Man stood over the kid in the street. “In the case you do recover from this godawful shellacking you done took—and I’m doubtful a that to be honest with ya, ya look spine shot to me—in that case know it was Cordwainer Sturm done put you in this predicament and killed your kin. You hear me?”

“Can’t believe I’m sayin’ it,” the deputy said. “But I think we should kill him. Leaving this poor boy like this, it ain’t right.”

“Yeah...” the kid spoke through gritted teeth. “Go ahead and kill me.”

Behind the obvious agony, there was anger in his tone. Defiance-even. I didn’t doubt Preacher Man for a second, that if this boy lived to become a man, he would come calling on Cordwainer Sturm years from now.

“No sir-ee, no can do, son. It’s the man’s choice and the man done spoke. We’s hot on the trail of a bunch of killers. The men killed your Uncle-whoever. Now, we leave you to your fate, see what it has intended for ya. Maybe one of these whores will look kindly on ya, suckle ya at the tit, nurse ya back to health. Or at the least make your last hours not unpleasant ones. Or maybe we should gwon’ ‘n let Chiefy take your scalp. But nah, can’t do that. It’s like I said.”

I should have stepped up then and done it, finished that spine shot boy off. I should have done it out of mercy and compassion, but I was scared. That boy before me could easily have been me two days before. I should have put one in the back of his head and dispatched the boy to the hereafter, whether that was a vast, blank nothing like Big Chief conceived it; a puffy-clouded cotton candy heaven with toga’d Cherubs strumming harps; or some ocean-cooled Elysian fields.

But I didn’t have the heart to do what needed doing at the time. I know that now; I knew that then.

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